Absolutely amazing song. One of the true and defining Dancin in the streets IMO. Great song to groove on when dosed :)

Love that previous review.
Hot show. Out of the box with guests!

from searching for the sound Phil's book.

while waiting for our set to begin, we were passed an innocuous looking ( except for the faint subliminal glow emanating from the liquid, and barely noticeable sediment at the bottom) Bottle of apple juice without any hesitation we each sampled the bottle and passed it on. as soon as the juice hit my taste buds my entire consciousness went into "Oh Shit" mode i had never experienced the taste of acid like that before. normally one would ingest less than one hundred micrograms (Ten Thousandths of a gram)and would be completely tasteless. for the taste to be perceptible, there must have been one Hundred milligrams (one thousandth of a gram) in each mouthful. we later found out that not only had Goldfinger with his usual prankster attitude, hit the bottle, but that every other acid cowboy in town had added their gram or twos worth.

phil goes on to explain that he is launched into outer space mickey hart tries to tell him there going on stage and he tells him i dont even know what music is. he fades back into his trip and he sees mickey again holding his bass infront of him saying this is your bass you play an instrument in our band, he layed the bass on him and dragged him up to the stage. and what a show that must have been haha

i'm with phleshy..this makes the case for best ever, if only it weren't for 5/2/70!

this isnt a review on the show as a whole (which is going wonderfully) but there is a whole lot of fun going on around the 27 minute mark of lovelight with wayne scattting and jerry matching him, what a great moment and perfect encapsulation of why i love live music

from what i have heard so far the friend of mine is super super super wow good, so much feeling and emotion just such a great song played amazingly, china cat had a good vibe going and the new potato had a pretty sweet jam out, dancing led by jerry was a great opener

Lots going on socially, and from some of the archive writings about this show, the band was dosed harder then ever before going on stage. A band that takes LSD and plays together as much as these guys did, exist on a different plain of consciousness. The creativity and emotional investement is glowing and obvious, and that's not a hallucination on my part, or atleast I hope not.

...but...is that Pigpen doin' the vocals on "Lovelight" ? Yeah call me an eejit if you want. It just doesnt sound like Pig'. But its a great show throughout! THANK YOU for this. 5 stars.

Interesting to hear Jerry in younger days. He was a friend of mine is very nice!.

This show contains the prettiest "He Was A Friend Of Mine" I've yet heard. I've always loved this psychedelic folk song, and this particular version is delivered with such love and attention to dynamics that I doubt I will find it done better. Jerry does such an awesome job on vocals and well thought out lead guitar solos that I always have to play it twice. This is not the same song as the Byrds did by the same title. It has the same tune but the Byrds song was about JFK and his assasination in Dallas. The apolitical Dead version is my favorite. Listen to the show for this song at least. Five Stars for He Was A Friend Of Mine.

wow what a way to open the show. an incredible dancing into a beautiful HWAFOM. nice china cut into the (tear) last new potato. then a nice me and my uncle ends the first set. holy shit an epic lovelight to start the set with Wayne Ceballos. nice sit in by elvin bishop on the things i used to do and who's lovin you tonight. the rest of the second set is pretty well played.

the banter between Pig and Elvin throughout and between Things That I Used To Do is too much! The audio is so crisp and pure for the distance between now and then. The whole show is a mental meltdown--but I live for these casual, spontaneous bursts of pure genius--they are just making it up far beyond just going along.....Do not miss this run out west in 1969 my friends. Thanks you very much upload crew and ALL tapers. I love you! Pure Bliss!!!!!!!!

I am so into the first part of this show!!! Dancin is so off the hook, HWAFOM is one of the best ever, a sick sick China Cat and a New Potato from 69?? I wasn't that into the guest part of the show, but it's certainly not bad at all. The quality degrades a little after MAMU.

New Potato might be one of the most unheralded compositions the Dead ever did. The changes and jamming and bass solo.....

UPDATE 7/7/05:

I'd have to disagree with you there on the 5/6/70 Dancin' being better. It's great, of course, and it has the Tighten Up jam. But I think it's way too slow and, at 17 minutes, a bit overstretched. This one is FAST, FOCUSED (unlike some Dead jams) and the jam is some of the best Grateful Dead you will ever hear. It is very obvious that everyone is listening to each other VERY CAREFULLY and the X-Factor is achieved. The sonic landscape that they paint is that of some of the best free-form jamming I've ever heard, by any group (and I've been listening to the Dead for more than a decade). Other jam bands like Phish can only dream of jamming like this without their pointless looping devices or sound effects to fall back on.

Along the way, Jerry pulls of some of the best guitar solos I've ever heard; constant flurries of Mixolydian-based mayhem. The guitar lick from roughly 4:58 to 5:03 is spellbinding, reminding you that he wasn't your typical rock/blues guitarist. To the reviewer that implies that this Dancin' is not great because the band follows Jerry's every move, I say that's EXACTLY the reason that this jam is so great. The interplay is telepathic; it's as if they were reading his mind. Now any guitarist knows that his solo lines were not that of your typical Clapton/Hendrix-type blues. They were jagged, complex and even a little sloppy, so it was difficult to follow and/or predict what he would play before he played it, making this jam all the more amazing since the whole group plays as one. Even more crazy is the fact that his Dancin' is the first-known time played since 3/3/68 and makes the earlier version of this song from '66-'68 seem like Cheese Whiz.

Now the 5-star rating is for the Dancin' alone, since the rest of the show, no matter how strong, could not measure up to the first set opener. However, the rest is very good with the early China Cat and the last New Potato. Great Cryptical>Other One>Cosmic Charlie to close out the set.

The Dancin' here is, uh, interesting in a "follow-Jerry-wherever-he-goes" sort of way. But it doesn't hold a candle to the 5-6-70 version which includes at least three fantastic peaks that rise from the collective uberMind of the band to steal your face, pull your pants down, and kick your axx.

The very mellow Friend of Mine is a sweet follow up. The St. Stephen rocks mightily. The New Potato Caboose (sniffle) is sublime.

Finally, this show is yet another reminder that Garcia's voice is simply one of the most original and beautiful voices in late 20th century popular music and he's in good form here.

Sound quality is excellent.

is two nights previous, guest Elvin Bishop: 6.6.69, same venue.

I think this might be the show Phil describes in his new book on pages 146-150. he writes "At one point I look over at Jerry and saw a bridge of light like a rainbow of a thousand colors streaming between us; and flowing back and forth across that bridge: three dimensional musical notes-some swirling like the planet jupiter rotating at 100 times normal speed, some like fuzzy little tennis balls..." it goes on on in colorful detail (get the book!) but ends with phil stating "that moment may have been the peak of psychedelic music for me" My guess that it is this show is based on Phil stating that it was in late spring 69 durring a period of 4 shows at the filmore west and elvin bishop sat in. He does not recall any of the songs played. Can anybody else confirm this as the show? Anyway it is a great show the other reviews do it justice.

5 stars for sound quality and what a great show love the lovelight

another monster Lovelight (nearly 35 minutes long and just the night after Janis Joplin's famous stand-in version), this version with Wayne "The Harp" Ceballos on vocals, is certainly an equal with the best versions then, + Elvin Bishop sings a couple of his own tunes later on with the band, + the final known version of New Potato Caboose not to mention a rare Dancing to open...